The history of the moving-picture editing began with splicing cuts of a movie film to each other by the use of an adhesive. In the early video editing, editing points were marked on a video tape having a record of video data, the tape was cut at the editing points using scissors and necessary cuts thus obtained were connected to each other using an adhesive (this is called “splicing”). This splicing editing was followed by the modern electronic editing by dubbing. The dubbing editing has been lasting long.
The so-called nonlinear editing has become prevailing for these ten years. The nonlinear editing technique can be said to be a dubbing editing technique. That is, the nonlinear editing is such that while viewing images acquired from a medium, the editing person or user splices the images mainly by dubbing them, subjects them to an image processing as necessary and records an edit result into a medium, or repeats this series of editing processes. The nonlinear editing technique has been lasting for scores of years.
However, the above traditional technique is not advantageous as follows:
Firstly, the repetition of dubbing in the electronic editing causes image deterioration. This problem is unavoidable with the analog signal technology, but has been almost solved with the baseband digital technology in which a non-compressed baseband digital signal is dubbed. With the recent prevalence of the technique of image compression, however, the image deterioration has become a problem again because irreversible data compression and decompression (expansion) are repeatedly done in the image compression technique.
To solve the above problem, it is one way to use a lower ratio of compression or a shorter unit of compression. However, this solution cannot be any complete one to avoid the image deterioration because there remain many problems such as larger medium costs, longer time of communications, etc.
Even when no data compression is made, repetition of the so-called special effects such as image zooming, pixel shift, synthesis, etc. causes the problems such as image deterioration etc.
Next, the image formats such as NTSC were created and standardized with major consideration to the TV receiver, carrier frequency assignment, etc. In these days, however, it is rather common to use multiple image formats together on the windows of the HDVS and PC. Namely, it has become a large problem in collection of materials and making of a complete package to be able to support only one format.
Further, since the user can make a window of his own specification with his computer, the method of selecting a desired one of available formats cannot support the user sufficiently.
In editing, time codes are used to identify an intended picture but they can only identify positions of the picture in a roll of tape and cannot basically identify the medium itself. Identification of a medium by a reel number is also available but it is used in a local range of application. Therefore, materials have to be pooled once on hand for later use, for which large labors and costs are required.
Similarly, the special effects and title superimposing depend upon the type of the user's apparatus. Since the user's apparatus cannot process materials by any method not supported thereby, an edit result has to be recorded to a user's medium.
There will be explained herebelow an example of editing using a video tape recorder (VTR), in which an edit decision list (EDL) is offline-made for example for a low quality working tape prepared from a material tape, and online editing is effected based on the EDL with the use of the material tape. The EDL used herein is a program having stated therein cut-in (IN) and cut-out (OUT) points on the tapes used in a playing VTR and recorder VTR but convenient since the electronic editing is automatically completed according to the EDL.
However, since the EDL has included therein incompatible items such as special effects etc., it can only be used in limited types of systems. Also, with the EDL, much labor is required for replacement of the tape and the like. The EDL is not convenient because of many steps for correction of a complete package (video material subjected to all steps of editing and which can be broadcast as it is); for example, just insertion of one frame before a first frame needs re-editing or dubbing of the entire complete package.
As above, the current editing system has many points to solve such as efficiency, convenience, etc. and also an aspect which makes it difficult to enjoy the merit of the network. If the above disadvantage is left unconquered, the current editing system will possibly fall behind the times. Since various problems are complicatedly tied with each other, any partial countermeasure, if any, will cause a new program, the complicatedness will be further increased and the current editing system will possibly be difficult to use if any effective approach to a solution of the problems in the conventional editing system.